Type of Hero

Adam Jensen is the main protagonist of the video game Deus Ex: Human Revolution and its sequel, Deus Ex: Mankind Divided. He's introduced as the Chief of Security for Sarif Industries and goes on a manhunt for the Tyrants who raided the facility and almost killed him, which resulted in him getting augmented against his will. However, after an event known as the Aug Incident, he's now a member of Task Force 29 & the Juggernaut Collective as he hunts down both augmented terrorists and the Illuminati.

He is voiced by Elias Toufexis.

Contents

Personality

The personality that Jensen exhibits during both games is fixed in many ways, but the player has the ability to shape it in various others. The game provides continuous opportunities for the player to decide Jensen's ethical/moral stance towards social behaviour and the use of violence. The player can also shape Jensen's evaluation of his own role in events that have already taken place by the time the story begins - such as the Mexicantown Massacre. However, the ending of Human Revolution shows that the player has more control of Jensen's actions than his personality; in the good endings, he commends himself for staying true to his humanity regardless of temptations, while in the bad endings, he expresses remorse and disgust at himself for abusing power and resources to achieve his goals, believing that he should have been better.

The most prominent fixed element of Jensen's personality is that he is a loner. He undertakes missions exclusively alone and rarely displays strong emotion even towards close acquaintances. He's also stoic and maybe even a bit melancholic when expressing himself, rarely showing any emotion, be it happiness, joy, sadness or anger when speaking to others. He is also heavily sarcastic, frequently making dry jokes at other people's expense, a trait he had even before getting augmented.

However, a few people in Jensen's life do provoke him to more emotional reactions and his inner thoughts and monologues are highly emotional, but he keeps those emotions to himself. He retains strong affection for his ex-girlfriend Megan Reed. He nearly commits suicide in an attempt to save his new friend and lover, Katrina Sutherland. Although he has a general distrust of authority - perhaps as a consequence of his experiences in law enforcement - Jensen respects and trusts his employer,David Sarif, and reacts badly when that trust is not reciprocated. He shows antipathy towards his colleague Frank Pritchard, who regards him with disdain in return - although their dislike of each other appears to be fairly superficial.

When first facing Zhao Yun Ru, Jensen hesitates and is easily distracted when Zhao pretends to be a victim. It slightly suggests something about Adam's personality, possibly that he has a soft spot for ladies in distress, although the reaction could have been manipulated by a CASIE augmentation. Many of the fixed events in the game, and especially in the comic series, describe Jensen as a professional operative with a high regard for innocent civilians in danger.

Furthermore, from various preview videos and from objects seen in game, it can be inferred that Adam is both a smoker and a drinker. Adam, before he is augmented, is able to cope with a lot of things, as he takes his separation from Megan Reed in stride. Thus, we see little evidence to provoke his indulgence in vices. However, after the attack, he loses everything that matters to him: his humanity, his lover, and his dog, among others. The result of this pushed Adam into a depression (he smashed his fist into his mirror), driving him to smoke and drink. We can draw from this that, regardless of the choices the player makes in the game to indicate otherwise, Adam Jensen is often given choices to perform actions that tend to his soul.

Augmentations

Alongside Jaron Namir, Adam is likely the most augmented character in Deus Ex: Human Revolution, with forty to fifty percent of his body replaced with augmentation. All of his initial augmentations were produced by Sarif Industries, and were given to him as a result of the attack by the Tyrants. While Namir seems to have his head and spine implanted into a robotic body, Jensen's augmentations are grafted into his organic torso and skin.

All of Adam Jensen's limbs have been completely replaced: his arms include nanoceramic blades that can be released at either the wrists or elbows for close quarters combat, a function that enables him to punch through walls by opening a section of his forearm, and the ability to dislocate his fingers (which he uses when grabbing a guard's helmet and spinning him in midair, causing massive spinal trauma). Other augmentations include firing stability, lifting heavy weight, and firing accuracy while running.

Jensen's legs are not visible as he wears pants and combat boots to cover them; however, they have various abilities, with no working parts shown to move. It is revealed in the comic that his legs are mechanical from just above the knee down. Deus Ex: Mankind Divided corroborates this early in the game when Jensen is first seen in his apartment, sporting Sarif manufactured legs. If the player interacts with the shower they can see the extent of Jensen's augmentation.

His torso appears to be biological, but is covered in dermal armor, along with bolt ports from the bar placed within his chest to support said augments. Underneath he has a variety of cardiovascular and muscular augmentations, such as an internal rebreather, a Sentinel RX health system, three types of bio-electric batteries, and the Typhoon Explosive System, its ejection ports mounted on his upper and lower arms.

Jensen has two augmentations attached to his spinal column: a Reflex Booster and the Icarus Landing System (although the effects of the landing system appear to originate from anywhere in his body).

Jensen uses the Glass-Shield cloaking system, which classes as a skin augmentation. The origin of the mechanism is still indeterminate.

Jensen's head has a plethora of augmentations, most notably a variety of hacking tools and the CASIE module (allowing him to see personality traits and emotional reactions of those he converses with). Jensen bears a hexagonal scar on the left side of his forehead, the result of the insertion of the Infolink's implant module containing a neural hub server, which is paired with a communications bead bonded to his mastoid bone, allowing for subvocal communication. He also has a cochlear implant within his ear cavity. Jensen's eyes have notably been replaced with cybernetic eyes (Eye-know Sarif brand) with gold irises that display various information about the environment, and can be used to record and view video, as well as serve as the base layer for some rather uncommon augs, like Smart Vision and its MAGPIE upgrade, Flash Suppressant upgrade, and a complete suite of Wayfinder Radar System modules. Jensen's eyes are compatible with another Sarif Industries cybernetic eye, the "Atid" model. Additionally he has an unspecified implant that allows him to cover his eyes in eye-shield lenses hidden in black comma-shaped augments around his eyes, an augmentation he shares with Ben Saxon. NPCs occasionally refer to this augment as "mirrorshades." Jensen almost always keeps the lenses activated, appearing to only retract them when sleeping, showering, or engaging in important conversations or interaction.

Adam is the only known Neuropozyne-independent augmentee, the result of experiments performed upon him as an infant at White Helix Labs. However his augmentations post-surgery are for the most part immediately "locked" to prevent overexertion of the brain during his recovery. Over time (or with the use of Praxis kits), Jensen learns to use his augmentations effectively, one at a time.

By the time of Deus Ex: Mankind Divided, he's the most advanced aug in operation, and possess orange level clearance (do what he says, question his motives at your own peril), and his classification is B-H-8-4-7. This marks him out as a walking weapon of the most extreme class, with the most cutting edge augs, abilities, and growth factor (first digit), he has overall respect for authority and the law, to a point (second digit), and a license to carry, employ, and possess weapons of mass destruction (third digit). Not only does he have his Interpol papers, his orange level ID card, and his ogre classification, but he's also been granted a weaponized augmentation license, which allows him legal use of a, as one metro station cop puts it, "reusable suicide vest." Sometimes panic-stricken civilians will cry "There's an ogre after me!," which is more than fitting, because after the standardization Jensen legally became an ogre: an aug built for combat and subterfuge. In the future, after killing at least a thousand men, Gunther Hermann would also earn this by then old-fashioned nickname.

Only a handful of characters in the game know the full ramifications of Adam's papers and licenses, and all but one (a train checkpoint guard on the second day) respond with outright terror. The one who knows what it means has a lot to say in the few words he gets).

Trivia

Adam is very similar to Alex Murphy; both are cops (or ex-cop in Adam's case) who are killed by violent terrorists (Clarence Boddicker and the Tyrants, respectively) and saved using massive cybernetic surgery. In both cases, they swear revenge on the ones who killed them, which they both get.